We are seeing the Drone reset today.
Ukraine has become very effective at countering the prop based drones, including shahed. The Russian adaption has been to jet powered shaheds and cheap cruise missiles (the familiar form factor) and the interception rate has gone down significantly and requires unsustainable countermeasures. These jet powered shaheds are being referred to as pseudo-cruise missiles by the people who study these things.
It's likely to be the hardest winter yet for Ukrainians based on the current dynamics.
War is chaos at times, life is complicated, its not always black or white. You are too focused on labels instead of understanding the change. The change is everythign, cost, advantages, in effective of current technologies due to supply and more.
The way to think about this is that it is helpful to have more nuanced definitions for the variety of munitions. They have different characteristics and requirements for countering.
When does a drone become a missile? It changes as the technology of war changes and the two sides adapt. Jet powered Gerans act a lot more like a cruise missile.
Similarly, we classify quad rotor drones with artillery shells in the drone category, used for the same effect, rather than calling them long-range fire (artillery), because they are dynamically navigable (even though some artillery shells have course correcting gps features).
"drones" are easier to counter then "missiles" - an important point of distinction - and Russia/Ukraine are both building super cheap missiles, for the roles long-range, one-way drones used to fill, because the drone versions are rapidly losing effectiveness. Jet powered gerans now make up more than half of barrages by Russia.
verdverm•40m ago